Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Editorial: May we finally listen
THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) has a lot of positive notes on the Philippine economy in its Asian Development Outlook 2008, confirming what government has been saying all along.
Among others, RP's gross domestic product has reach its highest in three decades, a manifestation of consumption growth and increase in net exports and investments.
Thus, the job market is bullish as well, except that... construction and services, both not so popular for long tenures, top the job market list while an equivalent of 23% of the total labor force of the country is working abroad.
At the surface, the numbers look good. But it may not be, because in the doldrums is the country's manufacturing sector, which can be the very reason why there are still hundreds of thousands walking around, praying for a real job among the masses.
"Manufacturing also generally provides longer-term employment than other sectors. However, no substantial expansion in manufacturing is likely without a significant and sustained improvement in the investment climate," the report said.
Adding weight to the yoke is poverty, which increased to 27.6 million people in 2006. The reason: Rising cost of living.
Is our government, both national and local, up to improving its fiscal position as well as increase social spending to fan investments for a sustainable growth and positive economic outlooks? Or will it continue to take the easy road of just giving out food marked with the politician's name for political sustainability come 2010?
While it will be difficult to pin down, there is reason to believe that all these are good economic performance figures.
But the benefits are slow in reaching people. A result of shortsighted development programs mostly designed with politics in mind rather than real progress.
It has been said over and over again, "Give a man fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
The problem is, a man who is full and who can catch fish anytime will no longer be beholden to any politician. He will even have the means to help out and maybe earn a lot of goodwill from other people, grabbing the credit from politicians or competing against them. And so, development has to be reined in lest everyone benefit from all these economic growth figures and there will be no one left to string along come 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, etc. etc.
And like Myanmar, we can beam as we announce the success of a political exercise (in Myanmar's case, their plebiscite), while hundreds of thousand are wailing for relief from the cyclone that has shattered their lives and hundreds of thousand others are waiting to be buried.
What has happened in Myanmar and how their government reacted may be a parody of a system that only thinks of self-preservation, but we are not better off; except that we're alive and no such cyclone has hit us.
